ISLAM:What the West Needs to Know

http://www.whatthewestneedstoknow.com/about_the_project.asp ^

[kronos77]

Main IdeaVirtually every major Western leader has over the past several years expressed the view that Islam is a peaceful religion and that those who commit violence in its name are fanatics who misinterpret its tenets. This claim, while widely circulated, rarely attracts serious public examination.

ContentThe documentary consists of original interviews, citations from Islamic texts, Islamic artwork, computer-animated maps, footage of Western leaders, and Islamic television broadcasts. Its tone is sober, methodical, and compelling. Outline of the Documentary

IntroductionWe hear from prominent Western leaders that Islam is peaceful and that those who commit violence in its name are heterodox fanatics.

Part 1: ‘There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet’Our interviewees affirm their belief that Islamic violence is entirely orthodox behavior for Muslims and stems directly from the teachings and example of the Prophet Muhammad and the commands of the Koran. We learn that the example of Muhammad is one of a violent warlord who killed numerous people. The Koran – the verbatim words of Allah – prescribes violence against non-Muslims and Muhammad is the perfect example of the Koran in action.

Part 2: The StruggleWe learn that jihad, while literally meaning 'struggle', in fact denotes war fought against non-Muslims in order to bring the rule of Islamic law to the world. Violent death in jihad is, according to the Koran, the only assurance of salvation. One of our interviewees tells of his personal involvement in terrorism and his leaving Islam.

Part 3: ExpansionFollowing the death of Muhammad, his 'rightly-guided' successors carried his wars to three continents, fighting, enslaving, and massacring countless Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, and others. Islam did not spread through evangelism or through its natural appeal, but through aggressive wars of conquest.

[Admin Moderator]

Keep the personal attacks out of your replies or suspensions wiil be handed out

[Elsie]

 

 

Claim:   A convicted terrorist released by Israel at the insistence of the United States participated in the September 11 terrorist attacks on America.

Status:   False.

Examples:   [Collected on the Internet, 2001]

I received this e-mail note today, from a reliable source. What can we say?

An Arab terrorist named Atta blew up a bus in Israel in 1986. The Israelis captured, tried and imprisoned him. As part of the Oslo agreement Israel had to agree to release so called "political prisoners". However, Israeli officials insisted that they would not release any with "blood on their hands". Some well meaning American President and Secretary of State insisted that all be released.

Thus Mr. Atta was freed and eventually thanked the US by flying an airplane into Tower One of the World Trade Center. This was reported by many of the networks at the time the terrorists were first identified. It was missing from later reports. That President and Secretary of State were Ronald Reagan and George Schultz.

---

In case you didn't know ...

Terrorist pilot Mohammed Atta blew up a bus in Israel in 1986. The Israelis captured, tried and imprisoned him.

As part of the Oslo agreement with the Palestinians in 1993, Israel had to agree to release so-called "political prisoners." However, the Israelis would not release any with "blood on their hands."

The American President at the time, Bill Clinton, and his Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, "insisted" that all prisoners be released. Thus Mr. Atta was freed and eventually "Thanked the US" by flying an airplane into Tower One of the World Trade Center.

This was reported by many of the American TV networks at the time that the terrorists were first identified. It was censored in the US from all later reports.

The American public must be made aware of this fact.

Origins:   What

we can say is that someone needs a more reliable 'reliable source.'

On 12 April 1986, Mahmoud Mahmoud Atta (also known as Mahmoud Abad Ahmad), a 33-year-old Jordanian native, ambushed a passenger bus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Atta (working with an accomplice) stopped the bus with a firebomb, then opened fire on it with an Uzi, killing the driver and seriously wounding three passengers.

Atta was arrested in Venezuela a year later, but because Venezuela had no extradition treaty with Israel, Venezuelan officials deported him for immigration violations to his country of origin, the United States. (Atta was a naturalized U.S. citizen.) Atta was arrested by FBI agents upon arrival at Kennedy International Airport and held in prison in the U.S. for more than three years before being extradited to Israel for trial in October 1990. His extradition was controversial because the nature of the extradition treaty in effect required that the accused's offense must be of a "non-political nature," and Atta maintained that he had committed political rather than criminal offenses. Nonetheless, the U.S. courts upheld Israel's extradition request on the grounds that Atta had attacked civilian rather than military targets and had therefore committed regular criminal acts, not political acts aimed at the overthrow of a government. In October 1991, an Israeli court found Atta guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

Fast forward ten years. As the U.S. tries to piece together the terrorist plot that resulted in four hijacked airliners and the destruction of both World Trade Center towers, they discover that the mastermind was apparently one Mohamad Atta, who had entered into the U.S. unnoticed and spent well over a year here receiving training at more than one American flight school. Newspapers (both domestic and foreign) begin to criticize U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies for allowing a known terrorist to slip into the country so easily :

[The Australian, 2001]

Much was made about Osama bin Laden's network and how difficult these people are to find. Yet Mohammed Atta, who piloted one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Centre, was a prime suspect in the 1986 terrorist bombing of a bus in Israel. How does someone like that — none of the hijackers used aliases — get into the US?

---

[San Francisco Chronicle, 2001]

According to a number of published reports, though most chillingly detailed in the Los Angeles Times, at least one of the suicidal hijackers, Mohamed Atta, managed to travel in and out of the United States on an expired visa. This despite the fact that Atta was on the government's watch list of suspected terrorists and had been since 1986 when he was implicated in a bus bombing attack in Israel.

---

[Boston Globe, 2001]

At least one of the Boston hijackers, Mohamed Atta, was able to enter the United States despite having been implicated in a 1986 bus bombing in Israel, according to federal sources. In interviews with the Globe yesterday, flight instructors in Florida said that it was common for students with Saudi affiliations to enter the United States with only cursory background checks, and sometimes none.

Finally, the Boston Globe, at least, caught onto the error and realized that the bus bomber and the hijacker were two different people with the same name:

Last week, many news organizations, including The Boston Globe, reported that US authorities believed Atta had attacked a commercial bus in Israel in 1986. But Second Circuit US Court of Appeals records show that was a case of mistaken identity. Another man, a naturalized US citizen who used the alias of Mahmoud Atta, was arrested in that attack.

Clearly, the message quoted at the head of this article is wrong in its facts. The Atta who attacked a bus was arrested by the FBI and extradited to Israel, not "captured by Israelis," and his extradition didn't take place until two years after Reagan left office. In fact, the Oslo Agreement itself wasn't signed until nearly five years after Reagan left office. All of this makes it rather difficult to support the claim that Atta was released under the terms of the Oslo Agreement at the insistence of "President Ronald Reagan and Secretary of State George Schultz" (which explains why this information "was missing from later reports").

What's puzzling to us is why newspapers — much less "US authorities" — should have been confused as to whether the two Attas were the same man (especially since one was fourteen years older than the other) or describing Atta as someone "suspected of" or "implicated in" a bus attack for which he had already been convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment ten years earlier.

(According to The Jerusalem Post, Atta the bus bomber "was eventually freed after the Supreme Court ruled there were faults in the extradition process," but the article did not state when this reversal occurred. Newspaper accounts as late as 1993 still described Atta as "serving a life sentence in an Israeli prison.")

What we have here appears to be a case of mistaken identity. The mystery we can't solve is why the mistake was made in the first place.

In mid-2002 the "We freed Atta" claim was twinned in e-mail with another popular Internet canard, the "Oliver North warned us about Osama" falsity. North did speak up about a terrorist during the Iran-Contra hearings, but it was Abu Nidal he mentioned, not Osama bin Laden.

Additional information:

        WTC Bomber Was Never Held in Israel   (The Jerusalem Post)

Last updated:   19 September 2002

 

[zimdog]

There is a profound difference between an assasin who happens to be Christian and a mass murderer who does the deed because he is muslim. Clear enough for me, anyway.

These people were not "accidental" religious murderers. They murdered in the name of their religion. Because of their religion, as they saw it.

You said (#60): "I have yet to hear of a single non-islamic mass murderer who claimed to have done the deed in the name of his religion. Not one." I named four off the top of my head.

The name of this thread is clearly ISLAM:What the West Needs to Know. Dragging Manson, Goldstein Rudolph and Torquemada (16th century! WTF?) into the discussion is so painfully pathetic that no further comment is necessary.

If you find the topic of mass murdering non-Muslim religious fanatics to be painfully pathetic, why did you bring it up in your post #60?

Please cite any reliable non-muslim (they lie shamelessly) sources where Manson, Rudolph, Goldstein and Rudolph mentioned Christianity during or after the commission of their common, albeit egregious crimes.

It's common knowledge that Manson killed in the name of his cult, Rudolph killed in the name of Christianity, and Goldstein killed in the name of Judaism. If you need specific sources, perhaps you have been living under a rock for the past decade or so.

Incidentally, every one of those common criminals you name were punished by the very society which created them; some paid the untimate price.

Their victims paid the ultimate price.

Name one muslim mass murderer, whose victims were non-muslims, who has been punished by his islamic "good fellow islamics".

Read the news much? Saddam Hussein.

[SauronOfMordor]

It's common knowledge that Manson killed in the name of his cult, Rudolph killed in the name of Christianity, and Goldstein killed in the name of Judaism.

There are not that many Christians who thinks that Christianity justifies murder. The same cannot be said of Islam. Dance and weave all you want, you can't dodge that

[zimdog]

no, our first ally was the French, it was the French who helped us win the Revolutionary War, not the Moroccans.

No, the French gave us military aid in the form of troops and officers, but this was after Morocco announced in 1777 that US ships crossing the Atlantic would be under Moroccan protection. This is what allowed our diplomats to negotiate with the French over military aid.

the Barbary pirates were Muslims. deal with it.

I never disputed that. Morocco was not a Barbary state. Deal with it.

Jefferson used the marines to defend America from their attacks on our trade ships. they were a problem then and they are a problem now.

Barbary pirates are not a problem now. Southeast Asian pirates are.

[zimdog]

There are not that many Christians who thinks that Christianity justifies murder.

There are too many many Christians who think that Christianity justifies murder. Dance and weave all you want, you can't dodge that.

[SauronOfMordor]

Just nuke Mecca and end it.

That would not end it. That's the problem

[zimdog]

Well, here's your big chance, Achmed, to set us all straight.

My name is zimdog. That much should be clear even to you.

Please give us as many sources as you can find from islamic countries, where they are the law, as to the "proper interpretation" of the hadiths.

If you are so "eager to learn the truth" don't ask me to do all the work for you.

[Coleus]

thanks for the link... I will also have to read The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) http://www.amazon.com/Politically-Incorrect-Guide-Islam-Crusades/dp/0895260131

[zimdog]

. And it's pretty damn obvious that the average Muslim believes that the Qu'ran and Hadith mean exactly what they plainly say

That's not "obvious" because it's not true. Salafists take a literal approach to the Qur'an, but they are not the only Muslims in the world. Because it is convenient to you, you prefer a literal reading of the Qur'an and Ahdath, but you also prefer to ignore the clearly stated historical contexts of verses you find to be conveniently murderous.

This means that, as more and more people actually read the Hadiths, they will come to the same conclusion as me: there can be no peace between Islam and the West

That's your warmongering conclusion, but not the only one.

[zimdog]

You're not dealing with ignorant knee-jerk liberals, here.

I haven't seen a knee or a liberal here, I'll say that.

[SauronOfMordor]

Salafists take a literal approach to the Qur'an, but they are not the only Muslims in the world. Because it is convenient to you, you prefer a literal reading of the Qur'an and Ahdath, but you also prefer to ignore the clearly stated historical contexts of verses you find to be conveniently murderous.

OK, so name some Islamic clerics, with actual following in the Muslim world, who take a different view. Name some. Then let us know how many Muslims consider them authoritative

I show some actual references, you dispute me, but give nothing to back up your dispute besides calling me a war-monger and bigot for simply exposing your sacred texts to the eyes of the non-Muslim world

[SauronOfMordor]

If Mecca were destroyed, the clerics would figure out a way to rationalize it as being a call to Jihad.

You think the imams and mullahs are just going to say "OK, no Mecca. OK, let's turn Buddhist"?

[swampmonster]

Russia - think the Central Asian Turks (of various types), the Ossetians, the Chechens, the Ingushetians.... I don't know for sure but I am willing to bet their Moselm population is procreating.

The tiger they have been riding all this time will be the tiger that devours them.

[zimdog]

OK, so name some Islamic clerics, with actual following in the Muslim world, who take a different view. Name some. Then let us know how many Muslims consider them authoritative

Off the top of my head, Abdurrahman Wahid, the Aga Khan, Saliou Mbacké are each seen as the highest spiritual authority for their milions of followers.

I show some actual references, you dispute me, but give nothing to back up your dispute besides calling me a war-monger and bigot for simply exposing your sacred texts to the eyes of the non-Muslim world

I call you a war-monger because you say that war is the inevitable conclusion of these texts, but this claim is based on your interpretation alone. If you have some evidence from your training in Islamic jurisprudence, you have yet to present it.

And BTW, my sacred texts have been exposed to the eyes of the non-Muslim world for thousands of years.

[Lewite]

a good article on Islime can be read at

yourarmstoisrael.org

select "a must read"
pick "Article 29"/"The Final Endtime Beast"
print and save for future reference.

[RobbyS]

"Bad Muslims?" May I ask by what authority do you say this? They read the same Koran as "Good" Muslims.